A REVIEW OF “JUDAS” BY AMOS OZ BY SAM SACKS
http://www.wsj.com/articles/zadie-smith-goes-dancing-1478895884
“Judas” ( Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 305 pages, $25), the quietly provocative novel by Israeli writer Amos Oz, concerns a wayward university dropout named Shmuel Ash, who, in Jerusalem in 1959, takes a position as a companion to an elderly invalid. His job is to engage the old man in a few hours of lively debate each evening; in return he receives a monthly stipend and room and board in the house shared by the man and his widowed daughter-in-law, Atalia.
Two strains of history run together in the course of this arrangement. Shmuel is writing a book about “Jewish Views of Jesus.” His argument is that Judas Iscariot, “the hated archetype of all Jews,” was actually the first fervent Christian believer, and far from being a betrayal, his role in bringing about the crucifixion was an attempt to prove Jesus’s divinity.
Mr. Oz layers this interpretation upon the bloody birth of the Jewish state. Atalia’s husband—the old man’s son—was killed during the 1948 war of independence; her late father, furthermore, was a prominent Jewish voice opposed to the creation of Israel, arguing that it was better to try to share the territory with the Arabs than to drive them out. For this quixotic belief, he was deemed a traitor.
Young Shmuel, idealistic and vulnerable—built “like a walking question mark”—discusses these figures at engrossing length with the old man and Atalia, with whom he falls hopelessly in love. Inevitably, their talk about the past reflects upon the future of Zionism. Who should lead the movement, the book asks: realists like David Ben-Gurion (“a clearheaded, sharp-sighted man who understood a long time ago that the Arabs will never accept our presence here of their own free will”) or pacifist dreamers like Atalia’s father? Who are the true believers and who are the traitors?
Mr. Oz has generous sympathy for the overmatched dreamers, yet “Judas” sets down no fixed answers. Aided by Nicholas de Lange’s lucid translation from the Hebrew, it challenges you to think afresh about stories and histories whose interpretations can seem chiseled in stone. It is a novel that prompts questions and self-questioning. What else can one ask from a book?
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